Twipsy

Yes, I feel quite lucky that I still received some tickets. They gave out tickets on a "first come, first served" rule and I ordered the tickets about six weeks after the begin of the ticket sale. I regret that I did not hear of the start of the ticket sale earlier. Then I would have had the choice to buy any ticket, even for the ceremonies. I am very happy about the tickets for some athletics finals and the handball finals, as handball is a sport where the German team has good chances to reach the finals, as it did in Athens. Eight tickets (plus the women's marathon on August 17) is really enough for me. I don´t want to visit more than one sports event per day, as I need enough time to explore the sights of Beijing and the Great Wall in Badaling. I have never visited Olympic Games before, but this is the chance of my lifetime, as it is cheaper than ever. London would be much more expensive for me, although it is just a one hour flight from my hometown.

In May I was lucky to find a hotel reservation website who seems to have forgotten to raise the prices for the time of the Games. I found a room in a hotel next to the Forbidden City for just $57 per night, paid the room and received a confirmation. Since then the price for the same hotel for the same period has risen to more than $300 per day. Now I am afraid that the hotel will find a way to cancel my reservation, as they can earn much more money if they find sombody who really pays $300 for my room. In Tianjin there a still some cheap hotel rooms available and for just 30 YUAN you can go to Bejing via high speed train (which opened in October) in 79 minutes. I don´t know when the last train leaves Beijing in the evening though. 158 minutes per day in a train can be quite annoying, but save you a lot of money. I booked a 65sqm suite in Tianjin from August 9 to 12 for just $98 a day. The standard rooms are even cheaper of course.

Hello everyone, in Germany we only have one ticket agent. The promised to sell at least 40,000 tickets, but so far they have only received about 22,000 and it´s not clear if the will receive additional tickets. I applied for 12 tickets, which was the maximum number per person, and received a confirmation for eight tickets (DV04, SW14, WL21, FB35, HO34, AT15, AT16 and HB42) on October 13 for a total of only 380 Euros. I already paid the tickets and they will (hopefully) be sent to me 14 days before the games.